The End of Men?

The Globe and Mail on Saturday devoted two pages of its Focus section to a discussion of Hanna Rosin’s book, The End of Men.

There are a few interesting anecdotes on changing sex roles, but there are no facts cited to substantiate the argument that North America is seeing the rise of a matriarchy as women have displaced men in powerful and well-paid jobs and as men take on more work in the household.

Sure, things have changed a lot since the 1970s, but not so much recently if you look at the Canadian stats.

Women earn more than men in less than one in three dual earner families, and that proportion has been only very slowly inching up since the mid 1990s.

Younger adult women work less hours than than men, mainly because they continue to have the primary responsibility for child care and other work in the home. The proportion of women age 25 to 44 with jobs is about six percentage points less than for men, and one in five women in this age group work part-time compared to just one in sixteen men.

And the pay gap between women and men has not been closing lately. Women working full year on a full time basis earn just 71% as much as men, the same proportion as in the mid 1990s.

In short, we are still very far from economic equality for women, let alone a matriarchy.